Rekonstruction
by Biscayne
Summary: When reconstitution doesn't work as planned
1. Why?

A/N-This story is based off of a massively multiplayer game, to be known as Rekonstruction. There is information on the game at the following website  
  
  
  
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March 3, 2196; 4:19 PM-Bear Creek Canyon, Colorado. 1567 people are killed and reconstituted in a rally for Alexy Dimitry today, only 259 are permanently killed, including Mr. Dimitry, and 274 survived unscathed. One of which was Mr. Dimitry's daughter, Carmen, who is the only surviving member of their family.  
  
***********  
  
Eric walked out of his apartment around 10:00. His thoughts focused on the reconstruction of the QIT and bringing Mare Moscoviense back to full strength. The colony had been operating on emergency batteries for over 2 months now, and only so many air tanks can be brought over on the human teleporters. The people here were starving, cold, hungry, and wanting to kill every person involved with running the moon colonies. As senior chief of the Public works board, Eric was in the direct line of fire.  
  
Suddenly, his cell phone rings. It's his fiancée, Susan. He answers.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
Susan responds, "'ya know, Eric, you should get a cell phone implant the next time you reconstitute, it would make your life a lot easier."  
  
"You know how much I hate reconstitution, Susan. I am certainly not gonna put a cell phone in my clone that I'm never gonna get in the first place."  
  
"Well then, what will you do when you get in an accident, your personality is in the network, right?"  
  
"Only because the UN made me."  
  
"Well, anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I've arrived in Colorado alright, and that I love you."  
  
"Love ya too, bye."  
  
Susan laughed at his tone, "bye bye now."  
  
Eric hung up the cell phone and put it away. Colorado? What was she doing in Colorado? Oh, yeah, that's right. That company picnic for AKD Pharma Founder Alexy Dimitry. Susan was, if anything, a really big pursuer of advancing the reconstitution and teleportation technology. Although Eric avoided what he called the "cheaters of god" at all costs, feeling that humans had no place to have immortality. And with this asteroid that he felt was on a collision course for Earth, there was not enough computer space on the planet and moon to store 13 billion souls if that damn thing were to hit. No man alive was prepared to live forever, as seen by the billions that are in Psychiatric therapy over that very thing.  
  
He stored the thought for later pondering in his Palm and kept walking. While heading towards the exit of the dome, he checked the plan for the day. Fusion plant inspection was to be completed today, which would get the power situation back in order. Also, the replacement cracking device for the heavy teleporter was to arrive either today or tomorrow. In two weeks the air scrubber would be arriving, and the new QIT team would arrive by heavy teleporter as soon as that was fixed. The colony council will certainly be proud to hear this.  
  
Damn heavy lifters, plan on never needing it, so you decommission the thing, but then a disaster happens, and they have to retrain the crews, get 'em outta mothballs, and rebuild the support centers.  
  
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Susan walked away from the phone booth at which she was standing, and pondered what Eric must be doing. He was probably walking to work, but he could be still at home. The thoughts ran through her mind as she walked to the check out desk. The teleport was quite busy today, full of people trying to get to Moscoviense, one at a time. She was sure that there were people here that had been waiting for weeks now to get there, and that there were people who were in the same situation there, probably more so. But, that was the last thing she needed to worry about, for it was now 1:30, and she needed to be at Bear Creek by 3, which made matters worse considering the 2-hour drive there.  
  
So she grabbed the keys to her car at the desk, and sprinted to her rental. Starting it and flooring it, she burned rubber all the way out of the lot. Driving at top speed all the way there, she arrived at 2:30. Checking in, the valet asked why there was no rubber on the tires. She responded, "Let's just say that I kind of sped."  
  
**************  
  
Many people are now following the cause of decommissioning all reconstitution equipment, either by politics or by force. One such group is a terrorist group called the Soldati. This group was against the expansion of reconstitution and teleportation, and would commonly bomb reconstitution facilities and teleports. The Soldati had planned a bombing for the AKD Pharma picnic. They had retrieved a small nuclear device to place under the bandstand. Setting the bomb to go off at around 4:30, these men and women, who were not entered into the reconstitution network, were falling back on an ancient technique of terror, suicide bombing.  
  
The plan was simple; have three men sitting underneath the bandstand with the device. When 4:30 rolled around, they were to set off the bomb and be the first casualties in a war that would end in Soldati victory and the reinstitution on mortality to humans.  
  
Or, at least that's what they were brainwashed to think.  
  
In reality, the bomb would have little effect on the world's infatuation with reconstitution, if anything, the lives it saved would convince people that it was a very good thing. Unless they could make reconstitution seem bad for these people, by making a lot of people unable to be reconstituted, or even have someone reconstituted before they were terminated. This would leave an empty shell that was almost impossible to reverse. But the question stands at, how do you get someone close enough to the carnage to be reconstituted, but not be killed themselves.  
  
Their answer lay in Susan Hannebury, a reporter from Mare Moscoviense. The newsroom was a protected bunker about 100 yards from the epicenter of the blast. Chances were pretty good that she would survive when the bomb went off, if no one else.  
  
When the stage was put together, the bomb was placed underneath. The three men who were to set off the bomb had signed up on the security team and had been moles in AKD's security force for months. AKD security had started to become suspicious of them after a teleport was bombed on September 24 of last year, and was found to have been caused by bad security teams, led by these three men. A letter on one of these men's computers was found which explained this mission in detail, and since it was found only hours before the event, it was too late to cancel the picnic. In compromise, each guest was required to be registered in the AKD reconstitution network. This measure would limit the number of actual casualties.  
  
Alexy Dimitry was a dead man before he even got on that stage. The only way he could be saved was if they had cancelled the picnic, which was not an option. On the subject, just minutes before the actual explosion, he was quoted to have said, "I don't give a fuck about me, my guests and clients are more important, and reconstitution is a must to their survival"  
  
And with this statement, at 4:19PM, the bomb goes off.  
  
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The second the bomb went off, Susan was in a panic, and then, suddenly, there was black. When she woke up, it was obvious she had gone into backup, as she had four times before in her lifetime. The fact that she only saw code in front of her gave it away, as well as this time, there was a twist, she had not asked to be terminated, and she was in a concrete shelter when the bomb went off! This meant she had been reconstituted prematurely. This meant that the only way to get a new body would be to have her old clone killed, which would be impossible for her only surviving family member, Eric, to do.  
  
************  
  
Eric heard about the blast as soon as it happened, and he immediately called Susan's cell phone. She had had an implant done, so the phone would pick up automatically if she was still alive, as it did.  
  
The phone picked up, but there was no salutation given.  
  
Eric started in as soon as it picked up, "Susan, oh my god it's good to know you're okay. Are you? Where the hell are you anyway?"  
  
No response.  
  
Eric's tone got a bit more angered, but with an obvious air of concern, in order to get a rise out of her, and for her to say something, "Susan? I know you're there, you know, the voice talking in your head? That's your fiancée, not the voices in your head. Susan, speak to me. Susan!"  
  
There was a click as the phone hung up.  
  
Eric hung up the phone and immediately ran towards the teleport. Buying a ticket to Bear Creek Canyon, Colorado, he hopped in the room, and immediately was in the middle of the carnage that had fallen upon this small mountain town.  
  
There were hundreds, if not thousands of people who had already terminated, which was obvious by the blank look in their eyes. They were still alive, but not for long. Then there were the dead. . These were the people who could not be terminated fast enough, and their souls died with their bodies. A short distance away from his current location, he saw a concrete bunker. He sprinted towards it.  
  
Upon arriving at the bunker, he immediately saw Susan, clothes tattered by the bomb, and her soft brown hair a little singed by flames, but otherwise alive.  
  
"Susan?" he called, praying and hoping for a response that sounded familiar. But what he got instead was a stare that mimicked the stare of the self-terminated in town. Susan was gone, reconstituted without being terminated. And although her body still lived, it was an empty shell, without being, without life, and without what makes us human.  
  
At this time, AKD teams had been dispatched to the location to terminate the dying and send them into backup. Eric called out to one of these men, "Hey, could I have some help over here!"  
  
The men's response was swift, arriving at the bunker almost immediately.  
  
"What's up?"  
  
By this time, the tears had started to flow, and this man's nonchalance towards the situation was not helping. "You fucking callus whore" Eric responded, "how can you act so blankly to this atrocious scene of death and destruction?"  
  
The man laughed at this. "Dude, what the hell are you, anyway, a fucking politician or somethin'? Dude, relax, we can fix whatever's wrong. So, what is your problem?"  
  
Eric kneeled down beside Susan, who stared blankly at him, not at all knowing who he was. "I don't know." He said, "I called her about an hour ago, and she was fine. Then, this fucking bomb goes off and she is this... this..." now he just couldn't hold it in any longer, and he wept openly, "What happened to her! Tell me or I'll kill you and everyone here!" he yanked the pistol out of the man's holster, and shot two of the men searching for survivors, and then aimed it at the man in front of him, who was now petrified at this entire escapade.  
  
"Yo, dude, calm down. We can save your girlfriend. Just give me back my gun."  
  
Eric, now calming into a psychotic state, responded swiftly, "I think not, especially if it means killing her. The fuckers who did this to her will pay, and luckily, it seems that whoever set off that bomb has saved me a lot of trouble. Now, either take me to a reconstitution clinic that can put the soul back in this body, or die like those two." 


	2. Death

The man, obviously scared to death of being held at gunpoint, obliged quickly. He called over a rescue vehicle, and helped Eric place Susan's shell inside. By this time, Susan's shell was starting to die from radiation poisoning. It was almost certain that she would die before they even reached a medical center.  
  
One man inside the vehicle pulled out a gun and aimed it at Susan. Eric aimed back and shouted, "That the fuck do you think you're doing?"  
  
The man responded, "Do you love her?"  
  
Eric responded, in a very sarcastic tone, "What do you think?"  
  
The man who had come over to help him said, "Dude, she's dying. If you want to save her, either you should kill her, or we will. It's your only option."  
  
Eric had realized this, but couldn't accept that fact. In order to save her, she'd have to die. He responded, almost completely choked up with tears, "let's let her die on her own"  
  
The first man responded, with a sense of confusion, but, realizing this man would not be able to live with himself if he had to kill the shell of his girlfriend, he gave him this right. "Ok, dude, it's your decision. But she's gonna die no matter what. Luckily, since she's already backed up, she doesn't fell pain. But, the sooner we kill her, the sooner you can see your girlfriend again."  
  
Eric aimed the gun, cocked the hammer, and placed his finger on the trigger, and fired.  
  
After the echo of the shot had faded, he realized what he had done.  
  
He missed.  
  
"FUCK!" the attendant said, "Either you have really bad aim, which I know isn't true, because you killed those two guys at almost two hundred yards, or you just can't do it."  
  
Eric was dead silent. At this point, he knew what he must do. And so he had no qualms about doing it.  
  
"Ok, here's what I want you to do. I want you to kill me, and then I want you to kill Susan."  
  
Both attendants in the vehicle were shocked to hear this. "You. You want us to kill you?"  
  
"Yes, and then kill Susan. At least we can be together in backup."  
  
"You realize that there is a very small chance of being put on the same server. If you aren't, then it will be almost impossible to find her. Even then, the chances of finding her are extremely slim."  
  
"I know, but, if I request the server and the drive, then I'll be safe, right?"  
  
"Not necessarily. Even then, these drives are several hundred terabytes in size. They store about four dozen people per drive, and each server has twenty drives. That's almost a thousand people per server, and average backup time is about a week. Dude, even If you make the drive she's on, you're screwed. The only way you're even gonna get reconstituted at the same time as her is if you were to die at the same time she was sent into backup."  
  
"Teleportation can move back in time, right?"  
  
"Under the right circumstances."  
  
"Take me to a teleportation site that can do so, and then send me back to around 4:15. I'm gonna kill us both at the same time."  
  
And that's exactly what they did. Eric and the attendant arrived at the bear Creek teleportation center, bought a time travel ticket for him, and sent him back to around 4:12 PM. When he arrived, he immediately sprinted towards the press bunker, which was still standing intact, along with almost three thousand people.  
  
Little did they know that within two minutes they would all be dead.  
  
Eric arrived at the bunker, and about four people, including Susan, all turned around and stared at him.  
  
Susan then ran towards him and threw her arms around him. After a long embrace, she said, "What are you doing here?"  
  
Eric responded, "We need to get out of here, now."  
  
"Why? What happened?"  
  
I know this sounds strange, but you have to trust me. In about two minutes, a nuclear bomb is going to go off. You will be the only person behind this bunker, and you will be reconstituted prematurely. Now, in about thirty seconds, both of us are going to run under the bandstand, and stay there until the bomb goes off. When it does, both of us will go into backup, and we'll survive. Any questions?"  
  
"Yeah, just one. What changed your mind about reconstitution?"  
  
Eric was stopped dead in his tracks. "My mind hasn't changed about reconstitution, it's just this is the only way you will survive this event. I love you, and I don't want to face that decision again."  
  
"What decision? Eric, what aren't you telling me?"  
  
At this point, Eric's alarm watch went off. It was time to go. "Ok, follow me"  
  
They ran towards the grandstand in haste. Upon arriving, they realized that this was no safe haven. There were three men down there, Soldati suicide bombers, with a small nuclear bomb.  
  
Eric and Susan had just signed their death certificates, and no reconstitution was going to save them. At that point, 4:17 PM, Alexy Dimitry made his statement. From under the bandstand, it was quite audible.  
  
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have an announcement to make. Right below my feet sit three men from the Soldati Terrorist Group. They sit there with a small nuclear device. Our company security found out about their location only about a half an hour ago. All of the people here, excluding those terrorists, are members of the AKD Pharma reconstitution network, which pretty much grants all of us safety. But.."  
  
A security guard came up to Alexy at this point, and whispered something into his ear. Alexy was outraged by what he said, practically screaming at the guard, "I don't give a fuck about me, my guests and clients are more important, and reconstitution is a must to their survival!"  
  
The terrorists under the bandstand, terrified about being ratted out, and seeing the reporter and politician under there with them, decided to set off the bomb at this exact point. It was now 4:18 PM.  
  
Eric, who overheard their entire conversation, told Susan, "terminate now, if you want to live, terminate now." Apparently, he wasn't the only person thinking about this. Before the bomb even went off, about two hundred people had already self-terminated.  
  
But Susan refused, saying, "I won't until you do."  
  
Eric was now faced with a dilemma. Either fall back on the thing he so much hated, reconstitution, and save both of their lives; or die like the terrorists next to them. He then remembered the gun he stole from that attendant back at 5:00. He pulled it out, and realizing he had three bullets left, pulled back the hammer, and fired.  
  
He hit all three men in the chest.  
  
Eric and Susan were elated, knowing that they had saved the greatest man alive from death. And then, at 4:19 PM, it happened. Eric was the first to notice it. One of the men was still alive! He aimed and fired again, but all he heard was a click. The man gained enough strength to press the detonation button on the bomb. He then died.  
  
There was a twelve second delay on the bomb, and during that entire time the button had to be held down. The terrorist had the trigger handle in a death grip, which did just that. In the end, Eric and Susan had no time to react.  
  
Their only way of killing themselves was gone, wasted on the three men with the bomb. Instinctly, they ran away from the grandstand, but it was too late. Before they even got out, the bomb went off, instantly vaporizing almost a hundred people. The rest were far enough away from the epicenter to not experience instant vaporization, and were able to transfer into backup. In all, about two thousand people were saved by reconstitution in that split second of terror, but it could do nothing to save those who were too close; including Eric and Susan Stevens, who were posthumously married at their funeral date.  
  
Their parents requested it, saying, "They were to be married in three days, in front of the United States Capitol, which is one of the twelve wonders of the Americas. Both would have wanted to be together until they died, and they were." 


End file.
